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Thread: 3.5 wbl how strict?
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2017-08-17, 10:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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3.5 wbl how strict?
How strict do people play according to Wealth By Level guidelines? I know the key word is 'guidelines' but...
I am in a game that started at 5th level, and we rolled our characters with the wbl chart. I assumed loot would drop, but I am close to 10th level, and still have the 5th level wealth. This is mostly due to the loot that has dropped has been more useful to other characters, but even with that averaged among the party I would estimate that we are still woeful levels under. I also feel like we are under performing as a party; the 2 deaths may have been avoided with better resources.
Now I don't think we need to be at exactly wbl, but within even 20% would be nice. What's the best way to handle this?
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2017-08-17, 10:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
It's a balance factor. The mechanics basically assume that you're close. Being too much higher or lower screws up balance and especially penalizes martials (who can't afford it) while not affecting arcane casters much besides hurting their defenses a bit.
Basically - wealth in 3.x is closely tied to character power and should be thought of as a secondary EXP track. (I've even known GMs that did away with wealth and just allowed PCs to purchase equipment effects with "moxie" equal to their WBL and at the same costs.)
WBL level guidelines shouldn't be messed with much unless you are using one of the alternate auto-upgrade systems. (Pathfinder Unchained had a couple of them.)
Talk to your GM. If your GM has kept you poor, in-character actions are unlikely to fix it.Last edited by CharonsHelper; 2017-08-17 at 10:36 AM.
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
loot is strictly the Dm's domain. So if you arent getting enough it might be on purpose. Or he doesnt realise.
I say you should ask your dm about it, it might be his wish for the campaign to be deadly and poor.
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2017-08-17, 10:37 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
In my group, we basically just use it for starting wealth when making a new character at higher level. Otherwise, whatever treasure we get is what we get.
Some of the DMs in the group are known for being more stingy or more generous with treasure, and they have their own reasons for it, but it generally doesn't cause too many problems. It's more like a running joke in the games where we don't get much, and it gets a bit silly in the ones where we have a lot more (especially since that's also the game where I'm playing a Wizard who crafts items in his downtime, further exacerbating the situation).
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2017-08-17, 10:37 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
You can deviate from WBL, even sharply, but it should be for a limited period of time. If you're spending multiple sessions in the red, especially if you're leveling up and/or facing tougher challenges while still being behind, you should talk about it with your GM.
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2017-08-17, 10:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
Not.
I am in a running campaign with my DM, and we rolled starting gold as if we were level 1, and the last pile of treasure got us ~120 gold each.
That said, it IS our first campaign.
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2017-08-17, 10:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
I literally just drop motherloads of GP value. By this point my players probably have over twice the WBL Guidelines in wealth
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2017-08-17, 11:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
I mostly use them for starting wealth determination; that said, it is true that the game balance is based on those wealth levels, and being far below/above it will make the party weaker/stronger; especially being short on it can make martials weaker by making their attack/ac/saves too low. (casters of course can just be poewrful anyways, and are a bit less sensitive to wealth).
A good dm, or a powerful party, can work around alternate wealth levels fine if they're aware of it; but if they're not it could cause a problem. I'd say check with your dm about it to amke sure he's aware of it.Last edited by zlefin; 2017-08-17 at 11:04 AM.
A neat custom class for 3.5 system
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94616
A good set of benchmarks for PF/3.5
https://rpgwillikers.wordpress.com/2...y-the-numbers/
An alternate craft point system I made for 3.5
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...t-Point-system
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2017-08-17, 11:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
Well, ideally, a party shouldn't have any magic items. The balance of the game is fragile enough as it is without introducing a whole new immersion-breaking mechanic to min-max.
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
Last edited by CharonsHelper; 2017-08-17 at 11:19 AM.
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
An experienced DM with a balanced party doesn't need to really care. It's mostly an intraparty and party vs. CR balance question, but an experienced DM can outperform both raw metrics with their own understanding and analysis of the actual variables beyond those numbers. You can just roll with whatever the party finds and go with that but martial types in particular are quite reliant on magic items for both, AC and non-AC defenses, and basic utility like flight, anti-invisibility, anti-illusion, immunities (mind-affecting, criticals/precision damage, negative energy, etc.), etc. Though more advanced martial classes like ToB classes can provide for themselves to a degree - again, it's a matter of intraparty balance. Casters can basically do all that with spells so they just enhance their spells with magic items like metamagic rods, caster level boosters and such (and get backup spells in the form of Wands and Scrolls for when they run low).
In sandbox-style campaigns, you obviously never give the party anything but what they themselves earn and find. Generally such games work best with experienced players and DMs, though the average monster treasure often does result in fairly reasonable WBL for the level if the items are liquidated and the wealth split fairly across the party. A successful party of dragon hunters is gonna be way richer than average (or way deader) though - but that's always the story of a big game hunter. In a player-tailored campaign you can give magic items for the weaker or lagging party members to try and even the scores, or to just keep them near WBL if there's no particular character in need. Both are equally valid, though the former is more work and IMHO much more rewarding.Campaign Journal: Uncovering the Lost World - A Player's Diary in Low-Magic D&D (Latest Update: 8.3.2014)
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2017-08-17, 12:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
In the campaign I am currently running with Pathfinder, to get my players used to using Path of War and Path of War Expanded material, I've been building custom npcs for them to fight and custom monsters to spawn to provide them with a more appropriate challenge. Now, that said, 5 mummies each with a level of Steelfist Commando turned out to be much more of a fight than I anticipated, because it wasn't until the second encounter with them (I've built my own little random encounter charts for this game) that I remembered 'oh right, they have to make will saves when they first hit within 30 feet'. And while the first encounter with those mummies wasn't so bad (someone got mummy rot, but it was over pretty quick) the second one, with the rules being properly utilized in it, was a helluva fight for the players. Now, they did manage to win (with a bit of small help from an npc that had hired him to be his muscle to see him safely to the next town, dude has an eternal wand of fireballs, but that doesn't solve every problem). But the mummies in that fight, being monsters who are vaguely souped up, granted random loot drops according to their adjusted CR.
Of course, I did say they are fighting custom npcs, and they are. There's a 'beat this guy with your superior kung fu to unite the macguffin' going on with the campaign, and each of the npcs carrying a macguffin is a mid to high level martial maneuver user of some kind, so I built them as a player character with player character wealth by level (and the macguffin on top). This works out pretty well, in that it introduces the characters to incrementally better gear, for the most part, by looting it from these fallen foes. While some of the players are bound to be a little behind or a little ahead, I'm not particularly concerned if they shoot upwards in finances, because the only way for them to spend copious amounts of money on upgrading their gear is by doing the crafting themselves or by commission. While there are enchanters about in the kingdom, there aren't going to be a lot, or any of them, with a +5 sword just sitting around waiting to be bought.
Having monsters explode into loot bags at the end of every fight tends to help make sure the players have Something for their efforts regularly, even if the monster entry is normally a giant middle finger of 0 loot. I'm not worried about my players getting too much money, their main goal for the campaign is time sensitive (or at least, feels time sensitive because regular people are endangered by it not being completed and the party has enough good aligned people that this matters).
Now, that all said, I have been in a game as a player where the loot did not flow properly. From level 3 to 6 we barely got anything, and then managed to get a handful of level appropriate items, then from 6 to 10 or so we again had a drought of gear. It was a zombie apocalypse, but thankfully I was playing a Soulknife, so while my ac was getting progressively worse for my level (in that it wasn't going up) at least my mindblade kind of kept pace with the challenges we were facing and the sheer weight of the party's dps saw us through a number of combats that a more traditionally balanced party would have fallen to. That didn't stop it from being awful though, and eventually the GM wound up awarding us with story appropriate loot for one of our accomplishments (Rather, we finally got to loot the hell out of one of the fights we were involved in) and the sale of that loot vaulted our wealth by level up over our current level. And then we kind of never quite fell back under wealth by level, because the GM had learned to properly sprinkle loot opportunities into the fights (or at least, give us enough of a chance to loot the enemies we were facing to make due).
TL;DR- If this is getting really bad, talk to your GM about it. Not in an accusatory tone, but as a point of concern. Like "I am concerned or characters just won't be up to the challenges we face due to a lack of level appropriate gear" rather than "how dare you gimp us by not giving us the wealth amount it says on the chart, etc ,etc ,etc"
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2017-08-17, 01:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
Because it makes magic items a mundanity, like a phone or a computer. How many other stories have such throwaway, indistinct magic items as DnD? I know of only one such story, and that's because it's based off a video game, and the main character is a crafter (and the other characters react, universally, in astonishment at this ability).
Magic items and abilities are supposed to be something special and rare, not some interchangeable 'bonus I need because my class doesn't provide what I need'. If you absolutely need a magic item for your class to work, it's your fault for picking an incompetent class. The mage is fine casting because it's an ability that they alone possess. A generic magic item should not exist because there is nothing special about it.Avatar by TinyMushroom.
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2017-08-17, 01:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
I pretty much only pay attention to wbl when I'm building characters. When I'm DMing, my players get as much gold as I deem fit for the situation, guidelines be damned. It usually ends up being a lot, but all of us have a good time, and that's what matters.
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2017-08-17, 01:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
Screw that. Magic item crafting & WBL rules produce a universe I'm happy with, don't want no stinkin' 'supposedses' ruining it. Real-life adventurers bring a ton of advanced gizmos with them, don't see why your mid-range D&D (N)PC shouldn't have as many. That would be immersion-breaking.
Last edited by ExLibrisMortis; 2017-08-17 at 01:35 PM.
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
That's nice, but probably more the subject of your own thread than this one. Which has to do with 'how badly are we gonna die if we don't have wealth appropriate to our level?'. To which the answer is inevitably going to swing back to 'it depends if the DM did this on purpose or not, and how much of a jerk they might be.'
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
I agree with you conceptually, but that's not how 3.5 was designed. The underlying math assumes you're getting magic weapons, armor, stat boosting items, and so on. (The easiest place to see that is AC-- attack bonuses go up with level, AC is roughly static without items). The "classes can't contribute without items" thing is probably accidental, but the need for "big six" magic items is very real. You really can't cut them out of 3.5 without some sort of replacement.
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2017-08-17, 01:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
Well, you can if you play casters; cast stat bonuses are nice but not necessary and beyond that, you can do everything with spells. Magic Vestment, Greater Magic Weapon, Magic Circle, Halo of Sand, Barkskin, Shield of Faith, etc. Even casting stat bonuses are kinda available. And if party has casters with those spells, the abilities are available to other party members too making it less of a problem. Mostly, lack of magic items increases the caster reliance and kinda weights the game towards everybody just playing casters to provide all the effects necessary for everyone to function as normal.
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2017-08-17, 02:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
You mean like Tolkein?
Frodo had
1. Magic ring (obviously)
2. Magic Sword
3. Magic armor
4. Magic Rope
5. Magical lembas bread
6. Magic elven cloak
7. Phial of Galadriel (contained star of Earendil)
And probably more that they never bothered explaining. And this is in a relatively low magic world (something no one has ever accused D&D of) and a rather low level character.Last edited by CharonsHelper; 2017-08-17 at 02:19 PM.
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
I'm actually fine with this mindset (though it is not by any means the only way to play) - but it requires significant overhauling of encounter math and PC progression if you want to apply it to 3e or PF. If you want magic items to be rare, you will be required to either (a) use an alternate gearing model like Automatic Bonus Progression, or (b) set a low haes cap on PC progression like E6 does. You simply cannot run the system as-is with rare magic items, not if you want your PCs to actually survive past low levels.
And to answer your question, no it's not just D&D that does this - Almost every RPG with a variety of item slots ends up having generic magic items. Look at magic items in a game like Elder Scrolls, or Diablo, or WoW; the vast majority are bundles of stats that serve only as Differences in Scale rather than truly unique Differences in Kind.Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2017-08-17, 04:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
I solve this issue by removing magic items completely, using automatic bonus progression, and making loot about the exotic mundane equipment. Instead of rolling on a magic item table, I roll on the special materials table and give players awesome gear that they can call their own, rather than getting tossed aside and replaced within the next couple of sessions. That, and a high focus on consumable alchemical items that cover a wide variety of bases that spells would normally be required for is all the players need to play a fun, happy game free of worry about "do we have just the right amount of loot from this encounter to maintain a competitive edge for the next one?
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2017-08-17, 05:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
You have a very limited view of immersion and video games. Immersion is totally possible in video games, and if you don't experience it, that's you to blame, not video games. If you're going to make this sort of claim, I'm (we're, probably) not going to take your position seriously, so let's pretend you didn't.
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
"Impossible?" Nonsense, CRPGs are plenty immersive. (Well, maybe you are incapable of roleplaying in a game like Morrowind, but I assure you other people can.)
Regardless, my point applies to tabletop too - if the game has numerous item slots, designers will fill those slots. If the power level of the game has a wide enough range (e.g. rats to bandits to giants to dragons) those slots will end up creating differences in scale in addition to differences in kind. Few RPGs have the substantial christmas tree that D&D does, but there are plenty where not every magic sword is the Macguffin of an entire plotline either.Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2017-08-17, 05:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
WBL is a guideline only, not the 11th commandment that a lot of min/maxers portray it as.
Sure, 3.5 is pretty gear dependent, and if the DM expects the party to fight a Balor with masterwork spear and a +1 ring of protection, then obviously there's going to be issues.
But by the same token, entitled players expecting DMs to slavishly adhere to the WBL tables down to the last copper isn't entirely reasonable either.
As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between.Last edited by Thurbane; 2017-08-17 at 06:11 PM.
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2017-08-17, 06:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
Every time this discussion pops up, people speak of balance, but they forget that the game designers were pretty clueless about any notion of balance and what is and isn't powerful (or maybe they just didn't care, but the argument stands)
Anyway, in all tables I've played at/DMed for the past few years, players (myself included) have had builds so optimised that there has been little need to have WBL anywhere near the recommended. Of course, this is just our particular play style, but if a Lv 5 group can wipe the floor with the CR 8 monster the DM throws at them, there's already no need for extra buffs to the players
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2017-08-17, 06:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 wbl how strict?
heavyfuel -> in that case the issue is also that the optimized PCs are facing UNoptimized monsters. having different optimizatoin levels between the PCs and the monsters does change the dynamic considerably.
your claim that people forgot of balance here is utter nonsense; we full well know the designers didn't balance well; but many of the basic numbers are setup under assumptions which do have enough relevance to be worth mentioning. especially as for some playres the optimization level between them and the monsters is more similar.A neat custom class for 3.5 system
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94616
A good set of benchmarks for PF/3.5
https://rpgwillikers.wordpress.com/2...y-the-numbers/
An alternate craft point system I made for 3.5
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...t-Point-system